Missy Franklin, Olympic Radical

By Matthew Futterman

Missy Franklin faces her big Olympic moment on Monday, when she competes for gold in the 100-meter backstroke.

Chris Schneider for The Wall Street Journal

At first glance, Missy Franklin seems to embody one of the classic Olympian archetypes—the wholesome, bright-eyed teenager from the heartland with the sort of toothy smile that’s been clinically proven to sell breakfast cereal.

But when it comes to the Olympics and the world of elite swimming in 2012, that first impression is a deception. Franklin, the 6-foot-1, soon-to-be high-school senior from Centennial, Colo., isn’t just an athlete who questions the conventional doctrine of Olympic stardom: She rejects it entirely. Missy Franklin, America’s new love, is a Bolshevik in swim goggles.

While she won her first Olympic medal Saturday in the U.S. 4 x 100 meter freestyle relay team, Monday is Franklin’s real debut. At 2:51 p.m. ET, the 17-year-old will go after her first individual medal in the 100-meter backstroke. She’s also expected to advance to the final of the 200-meter freestyle.

As the cameras linger on her and her parents in the stands, the various pieces of her story will begin to bubble to the surface and, in many cases, into Olympic folklore. One standout is Franklin’s devotion to remaining an amateur. Before these Games, she has resisted all temptation to cash in on her talent and swim professionally. “I really, really want to swim in college,” she told the Journal earlier this year. She has turned down roughly $100,000 in prize money and several multiples of that in endorsements.

Franklin’s mother, D.A., a physician, said she was having lunch a top agent last year in China at a beautiful restaurant in Shanghai during the World Championships last year. When the check came, she said, “He looks at us and says, ‘I feel embarrassed about saying this, but we have to go Dutch on this.’ I look at him and say, ‘I understand.’”

Franklin swims about 5,000 yards a day in practice, which is about half as much as several other stars in her sport. She doesn’t come from a state that’s on anyone’s list of swimming hotbeds. And unlike many Olympians, she doesn’t have the sport in her blood: Franklin’s father, Richard, a director at a clean-technology organization, played football growing up in Canada. Franklin’s mother doesn’t feel particularly comfortable swimming. “I’ve always been nervous in the water,” she said in a recent interview. “I never enjoy it or feel completely safe.”

As she progressed in the sport, Franklin’s parents rejected advice from other parents to move the family to a swimming Mecca like Florida, Texas or California. Instead, she wound up doing her training at the place where she first wandered in for lessons as a seven-year-old: The Colorado Stars, a swim club that doesn’t even have its own pool (it rents swimming lanes at five area facilities).

Franklin has also stuck with her original coach, Todd Schmitz, who was starting his first day of full-time coaching when she walked in the door. Schmitz grew up in North Dakota where skating on frozen water is more popular than swimming, and swam at a Division 2 Metropolitan State College in Denver, which folded its swim program shortly after he graduated. He owned a lawn-mowing business and was a junior corporate executive before becoming a swim coach. “Missy’s parents and I had a talk a few years ago and sort of mapped out a plan, for where we thought Missy could go, and credit goes to them and to her for sticking to it,” said Schmitz, now a member of the U.S. Olympic team coaching staff. “I talked and they listened, and we’ve stuck with each other since.”

Nonetheless, Franklin isn’t just a dominant swimmer who intimidates opponents, she’s also the most versatile swimmer among the U.S. women. In an era of specialization, where coaches and their swimmers will often decide to focus on a single stroke from an early age, she’ll go against the grain by swimming in seven events in London, including backstroke and freestyle—two strokes that have little in common.

“You just never know how a kid is going to develop,” said Schmitz, who had Franklin competing in every stroke in most meets since she was a young girl. “Two years ago it looked like her best event might be the 200 IM. Now it’s the backstroke. At some point she may break through in the 100 butterfly.”

Even Franklin’s age makes her something of an oddity. As swimming grows in popularity and commercial opportunity, more swimmers have been able to stay competitive and make a living long after college, which has nudged up the average age. Franklin is the second-youngest member of a team that’s largely made up of swimmers in their early and mid-20s who practice with professional clubs.

On Saturday night, U.S. coach Teri McKeever tapped Franklin to lead off the U.S. 4 x 100 meter freestyle because she said the team needed Franklin’s speed to keep them in the race. Natalie Coughlin, the reigning queen of U.S. swimming with 12 overall medals, was left out.

“Everyone has been saying Missy is the future of U.S. swimming,” McKeever said after the race. “Well, the future is now.”

–Scott Cacciola contributed to this article

Corrections & Amplifications: Missy Franklin didn’t attend a lunch her parents attended with a swimming-industry agent in 2011. An early version of this article stated that she did. The article also stated Franklin’s father, Richard, isn’t comfortable in the water. It is Franklin’s mother who isn’t comfortable in the water.